a German filmmaker who produced lush, elaborate scenes using stop-motion with excruciatingly detailed silhouette cut-outs. Even more impressive was the duration of her films—which qualify as features—made ten years before Disney’s Snow White, which is generally recognized as the first animated feature film

Made the first fully animated feature in history which is also the first feature-length silhouette film in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Reiniger transcended the flatness of silhouette animation by pioneering the multi-planeTricktisch (trick table), in which layers of glass are inserted into a table so that images with layers and depth can be shot through the table’s central hole

If a figure needed to make some complex or supple movement, it would have to be built from 25 or 50 separate pieces, then joined together with fine lead wire

If a character needed to appear in close-up, a separate, larger model of the head and shoulders would have to be built–as well, possibly, as larger background details to stand behind it

Reiniger cut out exquisitely detailed character silhouettes, joined their limbs with thread or wire to make the puppets movable, then positioned them on the surface of a light box and photographed each frame individually, stopping between frames to move each figure a few millimeters more with her hands

After studying at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), he worked as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios before breaking out on his own. Taking inspiration from popular culture, fairy tales and traditions of the gothic, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of a personal vision

“I always felt much more connected to creatures than, say, people”

“stitching was always a very symbolic thing for me. A feeling very much schizophrenic or compartmentalized, or falling apart or not together…symbolic or meaningful”

On humor & horror: “it’s always such a head on collision of comedy and tragedy in light and dark. In most good dramas there’s a perversely funny element to it, usually as well. They’ve always been more connected than not”

On colors: “The color blue I find is the most calming to me…Red is a good emotional release…it’s a strong quick emotional color”

Inspiration:

“What I really responded to in movies was German Expressionism…with the shadows and the light and dark…like Friz Lang…those old films that really captured a spirit and feeling of like being in a dream scape or inside of somebody’s mind”